End Time

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Blank Page

  JOSEPH

  STEELE

  JOSEPH

  STEELE

  JOSEPH

  STEELE

  JOSEPH

  STEELE

  JOSEPH

  NIXON

  KOSOKO

  KINNICK

  KOSOKO

  STEELE

  KOSOKO

  JOSEPH

  STEELE

  KOSOKO

  GWEN

  STEELE

  GWEN

  STEELE

  GWEN

  STEELE

  JOSEPH

  NIXON

  STEELE

  JOSEPH

  STEELE

  GWEN

  STEELE

  GWEN

  JOSEPH

  STEELE

  JOSEPH

  STEELE

  MAUSER

  STEELE

  JOSEPH

  STEELE

  GWEN

  JOSEPH

  GWEN

  STEELE

  Contact

  Special Thanks

  Author Bio

  End Time

  Daniel Greene

  Copyright © 2016 by Daniel Greene

  Cover design by Mike Tanoory

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters are fictional and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is completely coincidental. All names, organizations, places and entities therein are fictional or have been fictionalized, and in no way reflect reality. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  eISBN: 978-1-4951-9277-7

  To my parents for instilling in me the power to dream.

  To Jennifer, for allowing me to never give up that dream.

  JOSEPH

  Kombarka, Democratic Republic of the Congo

  Dr. Joseph Jackowski awoke with a gasp, a breath caught in his chest. His fitful night’s sleep broken as if an apparition threw frigid water on his face. He blinked his eyes rapidly. The familiarity of his tent ceiling did little to calm him. The heat of the night washed over him like a thick woolen blanket making him uncomfortable at best. What was that?

  As if to answer his thoughts, a scream pierced the humid night. He rubbed his eyes and reached for his wire-rimmed glasses, securing them on his face. Am I dreaming? The frogs, bugs, and other creatures of the night that screeched, buzzed and flapped endlessly were now quiet, as though they dared not make a sound. He turned his head to the side, listening intently.

  Another scream bellowed long and low through the thick nighttime air, making him jump.

  “Jesus Christ,” he cursed. These were not the screams of pleasure or fear. They were the wails of pain; a person in terrible amounts of pain. The sound punched Joseph’s gut, making the hair on his arms stand on edge. He had never heard anything like it, but some deep-rooted primal gene, long dormant in Joseph’s line of descendants, whispered to run. Only evil lies ahead.

  Joseph contemplated crawling further into his sleeping bag, but knew he couldn’t. He had patients to care for in the hospital near the center of Kombarka. If one could call the middle of the village, a center, a few hundred-forest dwellers living near the Congo River was hardly anything to write home about. They were poor people. Sick people. Dying people.

  He glanced at the glowing face of his Seiko watch. It read 4:30 a.m. His thin, orange, nylon tent was dark. Lightless in the deep foliage. There were no city lights or lampposts, not even a lantern this far into the jungle. Even the moon hid in the night. He fumbled around for his flashlight, scaring himself as he scratched the tent bottom with his fingernails. It’s only me you oaf. That dumb thing should be somewhere around here, he thought. His fingers patted down his laptop and pack.

  More screams from the village made him slap the ground faster. What’s going on? Rebels? No. There is no gunfire. Unless they were using machetes to hack up the villagers, a much more likely and no less terrible option. Joseph shuddered, his thin body trembling a bit. Every trip to the bush brought with it a host of dangers, disease, wild animals, poisonous insects, including death at the hands of overzealous rebels of which there were many in the DRC.

  The rustling of Agents Reliford and Nixon in the tent next to his confirmed that he wasn’t imagining the horrid cries. The screams were not some sort of delusional manifestation brought upon by dehydration or, even worse, the virus that had brought him to this horrible heart of darkness called Kombarka.

  The agents were there to provide security, but their presence afforded him no solace from the calls for help below and provided him with no protection from the deadly microbe that had ravaged his patients’ bodies. It was unlike any virus he had seen, so he observed only tepidly at a distance.

  The symptoms were similar to that of Monkeypox: a rash, swollen lymph nodes, fever, and dysentery. The most notable exception that he discovered within a few days were that the timetables had been more accelerated than any other disease surveillance deployment he had been on for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It chilled him to the bone, because nothing he had done even remotely slowed down the rapid progression of the disease. The first patient had died early in the night, and he knew it wouldn’t be the last.

  Joseph pulled on his pants awkwardly in the dark, unable to stand totally upright in his low-hanging tent. He felt for the zipper to his tent. Succeeding, he unzipped it and peered out into the darkness. Countryside dark. The kind of pitch black that can only be found beyond a city’s limits. Wish I could have found that flashlight, he thought. Ahead he could just make out the large white hospital tent, and to his right he could hardly see the Diplomatic Security Special Agents’ matching tent next him, only a faint, orange mound protruding from the dark. They always had to share a tent during disease surveillance expeditions. He was sure the two men loved that.

  A mosquito buzzed past his ear. Joseph slapped at the infuriating creature, but was rewarded with only a stinging handprint on the back of his neck. No matter how much of the chemical laden industrial bug spray he put on, they still came for him. He knew that they were attracted to the steroids or cholesterol on the surface of the skin. With his impeccable vegetarian diet he found it hard to believe he emitted such chemicals. These prehistoric monsters must be immune to modern insect repellent, he thought, swatting at another winged creature.

  Beads of sweat instantly rolled down his back. Joseph listened intently, straining his eyes, but all he heard was the high pitched whining of insects darting in and out around him. A tense nothingness hung in the air.

  “Arhhh, Arhhhhhhh,” screeched from the hospital tent.

  “Oh God!” he said out loud, hurriedly throwing on a white undershirt.

  He finally located his elusive flashlight and began to fiddle with it as he walked towards the hospital tent. “Come on work,” he pleaded with the non-compliant flashlight. He short stepped toward the hospital tent, trying not to fall or worse break an ankle. A cool hand grabbed him from behind surprising him.

  “What?” he gasped, spinning quickly.

  “Hold on there, partner. You shouldn’t be running around in the dark by yourself,” Agent Nixon said, his normally jovial voice tremulous.

  Joseph exhaled loudly.

  “Jesus. You scared me,” he breathed and squinted at the outline of the agent in the dark. He could hardly make out the man’s frame, but he sensed that the cocky bastard was smiling in the dark. Nixon was a new member to the embassy security detail and the two men had only met a week ago.

  His first impression of the man was less than favorabl
e. Agent Nixon had shown up late for their departure to the field. This wasn’t a horrible slight in itself, but the fact that the man had been fraternizing with female members of the embassy staff made it unacceptable.

  “Something is going on in the hospital. I must check on the patients,” Joseph said, staring at the man impatiently.

  “I know Joseph. Let’s wait on Agent Drago before we go running off into the night getting ourselves in a lick of trouble,” Agent Nixon said. But, despite his continued jest at Agent Reliford’s appearance, Nixon sounded tense.

  “It is Dr. Jackowski, please, I earned that title. And this is an emergency. People’s lives are in danger,” Joseph said. He waited, irritably staring at the white Red Cross hospital tent, crossing and rubbing his arms in an effort to brush away the mosquitos. In danger from what? A shadow moved across the tent outlined by the white material making his gut churn. Something is out here.

  His attention came back to his escort as Agent Reliford and his interpreter Bowali sauntered up from their tents. The contrast between the two was stark: Reliford was tall, white and muscular; Bowali was short, black and thin.

  “It seems that we’re waiting on you this time, Agent Reliford. Your team has made a habit of being late.” He didn’t care if he was rude. These agents were getting in the way of his research, something that a man of his caliber had no time for.

  “I don’t have time to waste waiting on your team to do their job,” he added.

  “We have a protocol for this type of thing, doctor,” Agent Reliford said. He glanced down at Joseph, brow furrowing as he secured a small plastic earpiece around his ear. “We should have already left after the reports we received from the embassy.”

  Even in the dark, the large man wore his trademark scowl.

  “If it’s rebels, we’ll exfiltrate back to the consulate… Nixon, switch communications to Channel 2.”

  Joseph looked at him furiously. More seconds escaped into the night. “Are you finished with your lecture?”

  Agent Reliford stared through him. “I’m sorry, but your safety is paramount. We are sticking to the book on this one.”

  The doctor returned his stone-cold gaze, and then averted his eyes. “Fine, but hurry. These people are depending on me. This may be vital to my research.”

  Ahead of them, a small hovel, cobbled together with a host of random materials, burst into flames. The sudden singular brightness bloomed a miniature sun in the dark.

  “Fucking A,” Nixon cursed. Shadows moved in and around the hovels, trying to put out the flames.

  “I’ll make a quick circuit around the village and see if they need help. Nixon, make sure nothing happens to Dr. Jackowski,” Reliford said, heading off into the night.

  Joseph could taste the smoke in the night air and he breathed it in as he ran to the hospital tent. It stung his eyes and burned his throat. Joseph ripped open the mosquito mesh door and ran straight into a man in dirty, torn clothes. The emaciated man fell backwards clumsily onto the floor. Agent Nixon, a step behind, caught Joseph as he stumbled.

  “Gotcha there, boss,” he said, straightening Joseph out and mock brushing his shoulder for him.

  Joseph waved him off. “Get your hands off me. You scoundrel,” He straightened his glasses. “Claude and Jules, what is going o-?”

  His local nursing aides were not inside the tent. But others he did not recognize were. They walked around the neat rows of makeshift hospital cots. Most were clustered around the patients still laying in their cots.

  “Visiting hours are over,” he said, a little more shrilly than he would of liked. “Bowali, make the translation,” he said. His translator rapidly made the statement behind him in their native tongue, Lingala. The people did not respond, and he realized that they were dressed in the same soiled clothing as his patients, confusing him. Anyone who contracted the disease was bedridden within days. In fact, most just lay in makeshift cots in their own excrement.

  “I… how is this possible?” he asked himself.

  He lashed out at a group of people nearby. This was his hospital tent.

  “What are you doing?” Joseph called out. People shouldn’t be in here without his approval. The disease was just too unpredictable. It most likely spread from eating infected meat from the bush, but he couldn’t rule out an airborne mutation.

  “Joe, what’s wrong with them? There’s blood all over them,” Nixon said, covering his nose.

  “That is terrible,” Bowali said. “I feel like I’m going to be,” Bowali said, bending over to retch.

  Agent Nixon was right. Blood covered their faces and hands, sweat staining their dirt-covered clothes. Could this be a mutation? He would have to get one of the aides to change out their clothes.

  “Cover your mouths,” Joseph said, taking a step back.

  He took stock of the tent. Almost none of the patients were in their cots. “Bowali, please tell these people to lie back down, and we will get them treatment as soon as possible,” he said, trying to control his emotions.

  Bowali relayed the message voice shaking. The patients did not respond. They continued to dig at a patient still laying in his cot.

  “I said, what are you doing?” Joseph asked loudly, over the muffling of his shirtsleeve. The entire situation went beyond his comprehension.

  What is wrong with these people? Delusional manifestations? Had the virus attacked the Labyrinth of the inner ear, affecting the patients’ hearing and balance?

  A few moments passed, and the patient Joseph had knocked down began to pull himself up off the ground like an old man rising out of bed. Joseph had completely forgotten about the small man amid all the activity.

  “Bowali, help him to a cot,” he ordered with a wave. His attention wrapped solely around the crowd of people ahead. The crowd of emaciated people clawed the flesh of their victim by the handful, stuffing their faces with it. They mashed their teeth loudly, chewing with their mouths open. An infected woman in a loose gown, blood oozing down the sides of her mouth, pulled on one of the bedridden patient’s arms. She pulled in a tug-of-war for the limb until the flesh tore sounding like a linen ripping in two.

  He stood still jaw dropping behind his sleeve. Confusion and shock washed over him as crimson fluid sprayed the perpetrator’s face and body.

  “What the hell?” Agent Nixon swore underneath his breath.

  Joseph shouted: “Stop! Stop this nonsense now.”

  The patients were deaf to Joseph’s pleas. Bowali’s voice quivered as he translated. His translation jarred the gore-covered patients’ attention toward the three newcomers as if they had just noticed them for the first time. They dropped bits and pieces of the man. Awkwardly, the bloodied sick people stumbled forward with arms outstretched, like toddlers reaching for a coveted toy. The faces of his patients entranced him; their pupil-less eyes snow white.

  The soft sound of gun metal releasing from hard plastic revealed Agent Nixon’s play.

  “No, please…” Bowali’s terrified voice brought Joseph back to reality. Bowali grappled with a skinny man, who bent in, his neck reaching in an inhuman stretch, to take a chunk of flesh from Bowali’s arm.

  “Get back,” shouted Agent Nixon. His weapon in one hand, he shoved the patient to the ground with the other.

  “Please, you must stop. I can help you,” Joseph pleaded. His breath wasted on the blood-covered patients ambling towards him. An all-out panic consumed him. He had come face to face with deadly microbes that could kill a man in a matter of hours; some even faster. But never had he come into contact with murderers. They looked rabid, like deranged barbarous animals.

  This can’t be happening. It’s just a horrible dream. That’s it, a nightmare. Joseph held his breath in an attempt to wake up. It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.

  Agent Nixon’s voice cut through the craziness of the background. Gunshots exploded in the air. Joseph’s eardrums reverberated with high-pitched ringing. Scared shitless, he fell backwards, becoming en
tangled with an empty cot, now an insurmountable obstacle. Joseph struck the hard dirt floor with a thud and his glasses flew from his face as if they no longer wanted to be there. His breath struggled to reach his lungs, only able to take in the smallest amount of air. His eyes squeezed shut in pain.

  After a moment, he slowly opened his eyes. Milky white eyes glared into his, the unblinking and lifeless eyes of a man with a bullet hole in his head. This can’t be happening. His vision blurred, Joseph groped the earth-packed floor for his glasses.

  Any second now the crazed patients would be all over him, biting and chewing him to pieces. He wet himself as two hands slammed into his shoulders and dug into his sweaty skin.

  “No, please,” he begged, curling into a ball.

  A great strength pulled him to his feet. Joseph opened his eyes with hesitation, anticipating a macabre face inching toward his.

  “Joseph?” a voice entreated. Agent Nixon stood close to him, his face flush with agitation. “Are you okay? We need to leave.”

  Nixon’s eyes darted back and forth. “I got no comms with Reliford. We are going back to the vehicle.”

  Nixon stuck his head through the tent door. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t want to stay around to find out,” he said, removing some sort of bullet holder from his gun. The agent looked closely at the bullets before slamming them back in the gun.

  Joseph had never understood guns. He turned to study Bowali standing there holding his forearm, a dumbfounded look scrawled across his face. He held his arm close to his body as if he were afraid he was going to lose it, redness seeping between his fingers.

  “He bit me. Doctor, he bit me,” Bowali said, gritting his teeth.

  Joseph snapped back into his role as a man of medicine. Although trauma care wasn’t his specialty in the medical community, he had more than enough training. Bowali’s hand shook as he removed it from his wound, revealing the imprint of a human bite. Puncture wounds revealed white bone exposed from where the teeth had sawed all the way through the muscle.